My Experience Shooting Cinematic Headshots Indoors

With my recent tutorial, The Cinematic Headshot with Dylan Patrick, I go over my entire process for shooting my cinematic style outdoors. As I have been a photographer that has never used a studio for my work, many have found this method of shooting very freeing. That said, sometimes you just can’t rely on the weather. In my latest post on Fstoppers I talk about my experience recreating the look indoors when I went to NYC the end of April to do a full week of headshot session. With 26 sessions booked there was no way to chance it with NYC’s fickle weather so we rented a large sun lit space at Shetler Studios. The photograph above of the lovely Amanda Berry was shot entirely indoors. Head over to Fstoppers.com to read more!

8 comments

Found a clip of your tutorial on youtube and Facebook and loved it. Learned it and I absolutely LOVE your tutorial.
I’m still working on working on my HSS for I too am getting black bars all over the place, even at 1/800th. The weird thing is if I bring my F/stop up to 4, the black bars go away. Anyways, this is my very first attempt at your style of shooting. I am also from NYC. Whenever you’re doing a shoot in NYC, please contact me, for I’d love to watch up close and learn. Thank you very much.

I have almost the exact same gear that you use and I avoid shooting through a soft box outdoors because I did not think a single Speedlight had the power for HSS at 1/4000 of a sec even at f2.8. I suppose you could tell me to go test it, but if you have any thoughts or other tricks you could share I would love to hear about it. I’m very close to purchasing some battery-operated studio strobes that have HSS capability, but you may have changed my thinking. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and keep up the great work.

Thank you for the kind words! To clarify a single speedlight does not have the power at 1/4000th sec, but I routinely shoot up to 1/1600th sometimes 1/2000th. I find the prime spot is around 1/1250th which for most outdoor applications is plenty to control the ambient if you don’t shoot directly into the brightest area you can find. Typically I look for sunlit areas for backgrounds but areas that are lit and mixed with darker areas to find sweet spots. Like I said if needed you can push to 1/2000th and you just have to get the key light super close. Obviously you can also add a second speedlight too if you wish